Stagecoach

You might be a bird nerd if… you are working and are so distracted by birds that co-workers hold up keys asking you to focus, focus…

This one may need some explanation. The past two weekends I signed up for some overtime at the Coachella Fest and Stagecoach music festivals in Indio. For those of you who may not have heard of these events, these are weekend long events that provide nearly constant bands and musicians on stage from the rock n’roll genre, (Coachella Fest), and country music genre, (Stagecoach). Nearly 100,000 people come to the festivities for Coachella Fest, and probably closer to 60,000 people come to Stagecoach.

The city of Indio hosts these events at the Empire Polo Grounds between Avenue 50 and Avenue 52, from the north to south. The stages are set up in a semi-circle arrangement with booths and various entertainment venues in the north and center areas. There are plenty of sound, light, and physical entertainments of all kinds. There are also plenty of things for officers to do, with a large amount of excess drinking, drugs, tempers, and more.

I get to work the shift of six in the morning to six-thirty at night. I work with a partner of the day who has also signed up for overtime. For Coachella Fest we are assigned the outlying parking lots.

I drive my police car and begin slowly cruising the parking lots, that are full of small sedans, including Hondas, Subarus, Toyotas and more. Tents were everywhere, and people were either sleeping in their cars, tents or simply on the ground.

My partner is gearing up to work the event and anticipating that anything can happen. So, I begin cruising the parking lot, and scan the horizon. I suddenly stop and begin to back up, which of course, puts my partner on alert. I stop about ten feet from my focus and confirm, yep, it’s a Kingbird. I saw the first of several Western Kingbirds (Tyrannus verticalis) sitting on wires of corral fences, on telephone wires and flitting about the large grassy areas people were parking, (and puking) on.

Needless to say there was a sheepish explanation on my part that I needed to see the bird better to make a better identification. She seemed understanding, but I noticed she withdrew her name from the overtime sign up for the next week at Stagecoach.

The next week I worked the Stagecoach, and the sea of small sedans with tents in between cars was replaced by a sea of motor homes and trailers. They came in all sizes and shapes with all kinds of pastimes in between the motor homes including small pools, all variations of horseshoes, footballs, beer pong, pink flamingos, blow up palm trees and more.

This time I worked with a young man and we drove a golf cart around the surrounding parking lots. This time he drove, so I had less control over where we went and what we saw. However, I did make a list of the birds I saw while I rode “shotgun” in the golf cart. I saw Bonaparte’s gulls, (Larus Philadelphia), Ring billed gulls, (Larus delawarensis), flocking around the open areas especially near the trash cans in the morning. I saw Abert’s towhee, (Pipilo aberti), and many Brewer’s blackbirds, (Euphagus cyanocephalus), foraging around the grassy parking areas. While driving around in the morning, I saw a pair of Canada geese, (Banta Canadensis), with goslings on the outer perimeter of the event. (I nearly fell out of the cart trying to crane my neck to better see the family).

There were also Great Tailed Grackles, (Quiscalus mexicanus), and House Sparrows, (Passer domesticus) foraging about the events and campers. One of the more interesting sightings was of three Ferruginous hawks, (Buteo regalis). We were in the command post parking area when I kept hearing the high pitched call of a hawk. I searched the sky until I found it and saw it was two. I watched as one soared overhead slowly passing another that was circling a stand of eucalyptus trees across the street from the event. Then I saw a third soaring higher still. I wasn’t sure if they were Red-shouldered hawks, or another kind, because of the call, but looking in my handy-dandy National Geographic North American Birds field guide, and I believe the birds were Ferruginous hawks. Nice.

None of them were lifer birds but it made for an interesting day. I did get a lot of “people watching” in as well, and even got some police work in as well. All in all a couple of good days that included bird-watching, people watching and overtime pay. A win-win-win situation for me.